Project Iris would have been shelved after the recent round of layoffs at Google. Alternatively, Google hopes to develop “the new Android for AR”.

Google will not release AR glasses. Business Insider claims to have learned this from well-informed sources. In early 2022, Google announced Project Iris, AR glasses that like the Apple Vision Pro are equipped with external cameras to show a “mixed reality” image of your surroundings with virtual elements projected onto it.

The project would have been abandoned after recent rounds of layoffs at Google severely weakened the number of teams that had to work on the glasses. According to insiders, project leader Clay Bavor left Google out of frustration because management was constantly changing the direction of the AR strategy. To be clear, Google has not yet confirmed this news.

Android for AR

But even without its own hardware, Google doesn’t want to miss the mixed reality train. The focus is merely shifted from the hardware to the software. The remaining engineers have now been tasked with developing a mixed reality software platform, codenamed Betty.

Google hopes to have as much behind-the-scenes impact on the AR industry as Android has on the smartphone industry today, without having to be the top-grossing hardware maker. The tech giant wants to appease Samsung with Betty, among other things.

Google glasses

Google does not want to succeed in bringing its own AR glasses onto the market. In 2012, the company launched the Google Glass, but this project failed and ended up in the famous Google graveyard because the augmented reality market was not mature enough at that time.

That seems to be changing now, because Apple is launching the Vision Pro and Meta also wants to focus fully on the technology. Nevertheless, the search continues for concrete applications that can prove the added value of AR. Google now seems to realize that the key is in the software.